Anj Smith Development

In an effort to break the cliche idea of putting flowers in a girl's hair, I opted to pick the most unusual, strange looking mushrooms I could possibly find. The bright colours and strange patterns make them almost unrecognisable as real, living breathing mushrooms. This could make my art difficult to understand because they are not recognisable, traditional forms of fungi, but I am sure that the other nature surrounding them will make my intentions clear.

Inspiration

Inspiration

These images are very feminine, very cliche and not something that I wish to replicate, but I do enjoy the demonstration of how the flowers interact with the hair, and how the hair flows beautifully like water.

I wish to use more than just flowers in my work. Other aspects of nature such as vines, foliage, small creatures, rocks, crystals, minerals and so much more - fungi, animalistic features such as antlers, wings, feathers, markings. I'll see where my research and experimentation takes me, and see what I can incorporate along the way.

These are just a starting point.

(none of these images are my own)

Zhongwen Yu

Zhongwen Yu

Anj Smith

Anj Smith is an English artist currently working in London, having completed her BA Fine Art Painting course at the Slade School of Fine Art. She is, as of 2017, 39 years of age and continuing to hold exhibitions of her paintings up to this day.

Her paintings are very bizarre to me. Almost every one of them starring a pale, fish eyed woman with , dark circles around the eyes, reconstituted patch clothing and a matted mess of hair, intertwined with many strange objects.



Although her style has gripped me, I can not say that I particularly enjoy it. It definitely evokes a reaction from the viewer, mostly thanks to the hauntingly dark eyes of the women in her paintings, and the pale, almost translucent skin (the subtle blue and green tones in the skin assert this affect very well). The women look ill and out of proportion. Perhaps they are on drugs or hard times. These theories are only further supported by the state of their hair and clothing, which is often matted and ripped. The muted colour schemes do not connote happiness at all. Smith seems to generally avoid bright colours, which sets a neutral, rather empty tone to her work. There is a lot of implied texture in this piece, although, as far as I am aware, the paintings are perfectly flat.




It is the hair that interests me the most. I have a natural admiration for art that flows, and the hair in this image does flow, but also doesn't. It's almost frustrating, as the natural flow of the hair is obstructed by strange objects such as feathers, wire, fabrics, and many other strange things that seem to come from nature.

I intend to explore this concept further, with my own adaptations. The subtle inclusions of nature in the hair could be amplified, which I think would be very interesting. Many more forms of nature could be incorporated into the hair, such as leaves, vines, flowers, even living creatures. I sketched a simple idea of what else I could add into the hair, here.

This sketch was created using a purple fineliner, which I then painted over with a wet paintbrush to allow the ink to run.

In the hair, I incorporated shells, feathers, vines and a rats tail as well as the usual braids that Smith seems so fond of.

I enjoy the idea of weaving interesting colours, patterns and forms from nature into hair. This would lead to a rather surreal
piece, which I would fully support. The natural flow of hair would guide my way around it, and all I would have to do is
think creatively on what to incorporate into the piece.
I think that this would be especially interesting in 3D, and so, perhaps I could consider sculpting items from clay
or wire to add into the mix.

I also created a transcription of one of Anj Smith's paintings.

A4, acrylic + watercolour

This is not my favourite piece of art. I did not enjoy the process, as the alienlike face threw me off track. I made the effort to align her eyes slightly better, and have plumped her lips ever so slightly. This is an incredibly rough effort, but helped me to understand the way that the hair flows, how the odd features align, and how to create a skintone that appears ill.











Personally, the haunting faces of these women do not appeal to me, and if I were to take inspiration from this style, I would ignore the facial structure altogether. I feel that these pieces would be much easier on the eye with softer, less angular faces with less contrast. Specifically, I can imagine the soft faces of a renaissance or rococo style portrait working well.

Original Anj Smith painting

George Romney - Lady Hamilton (As Miranda)                                                                                                          

My adaptation - I used photoshop to transfer the face of an 17th century portrait onto the face of Anj Smith's painting.
The entire feeling of the painting has already changed, with a simple softening of features. I am pleased with the results of this simple photoshop task. 

Needless to say, I prefer softness in portraits to harsh features, and if I was planning to recreate another transcription from Smith's work, I would employ the use of softer features, and possibly a warmer colour scheme too.

Mark Rothko

Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz was an American artist of Russian-Jewish descent. Later shortened to Mark Rothko as an alias for his art. He was a painter, and his creations are primarily abstract-expressionist by categorisation. Although, Rothko himself refused to adhere to any particular art movement.

The paintings, although relatively simple, are very large in size. He states that his intentions are to be intimate and human with his art, and to achieve this, the pictures must be large enough to be "in it" during its creation. On the contrary, he says that to paint a small picture is to "place yourself outside your experience."

I found this very interesting, as I have always created small scale art, and enjoyed doing so. Having said this, my art tends to involve much, much more detail than Rothko's, and to do so on a scale as large as this, would be much less enjoyable (at least, to me personally). I can see why Rothko would enjoy working on a large scale when creating the minimalist art that he did, as the large scale would allow him the room to move freely and create striking brush strokes with reckless abandon. I think that I would enjoy the process, too. But I cannot bring my self to enjoy the art style, unfortunately. I enjoy art with visible detail and narrative far too much.

What I AM interested in, though, and what I DO enjoy, is his use of colour and the schemes within them. From the research I have conducted, I have learnt that Rothko suffered with some mental health issues. Several layers of depression, brought on by immigrant poverty, two failed marriages, and the impact of WW1 and 2. This spiral unfortunately ended in a dramatic suicide at age 67, in 1970.

His interests, (likely spurred by his ill health,) were based around the expression of human emotion.
To do this with such a minimalist style required a great knowledge of colour, and how it affected the humans around him. The rich colours of his darker pieces were sure to evoke an emotional response. Rothko speaks of it here:

"... expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."

I can imagine his thought process, especially if he was in a bad state of mind. Negativity, emotional unrest and anger resonate with darker colours, and shades of red. The dirty red could possibly relate back to his memories of war (both of them).

I admire his use of colour, and his vast understanding of it. Perhaps, it was not only that he was aware of the colours and how to use them, but that he felt them.
I would like to explore his use of colour in my own work. In no way will I plan to imitate his style in my final outcome, but I would like to be able to learn from his processes.

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Intentions:

I am in a much safer state of mind than Rothko ever seemed to be, and I intend to stay that way. My mindset naturally reflects in my art. Whereas Rothko pressed on tragedy and negativity, I value what is positive, what is free of hate and what is beautiful. This, and how they make people feel as a result. I would like to impose this positive feeling onto whoever may witness my art.

I am looking at nature and the colours within it. The naturally occurring colour schemes of nature naturally make me feel calm and happy. Negativity drains from my mind, when pleasant colours are infront of me. Because of this, I will be using palettes directly from nature to create transcriptions and developments.

My own gathered images.

Out of all of my developments, this is probably the one most like Rothko's works. The colours, although natural and picked directly from the image, are mostly neutral or warm. They remind me of an old film, or vintage photography. The series of greys seem like a variation of tone, whereas the brown is like sepia.
(this is my least favourite development of them all)

This development comes from an image that is much more colourful, and the feel of nature is present in it. The green and brown especially compliment each other as they would do in nature, whereas the yellow, purple and pink add the colour pops that I so admire. These shades are plucked directly from the photograph using the colour picker tool.

This piece was also created using nothing but the colour picker tool to create my colour palette. The colours in the painting are identical to the brightest points on the photograph, but despite this, the painting looks somehow underwhelming in comparison. Having said this, the photograph was taken under artificial light in a museum. I can understand why this would mute the colours photographically. But optically,  to me, the colours of this butterfly seem much brighter than they are.

I would have loved to see this butterfly in its full glory in the sunshine, where the natural light can compliment the natural brightness of the colours.

In an effort to get a ,more colourful idea of the colour scheme that the butterfly may have in the wild, I adjusted the saturation of the two images. I thought that perhaps the image would have a more pleasant affect on the viewer, with brighter colours to behold. I think that it has done nothing but the opposite, making it look unnatural, forced and rather ugly. It is a strain on my eyes personally, which is not what I was going for. I think that perhaps it would be better to take inspiration from the butterfly, rather than copying it directly.

This is the product of my taking inspiration, rather than completely and blindly copying. I like this much better for several reasons. The colour scheme is calming, and easy on the eye. Not too bright, but not too dull, and it still looks plausible and believable that these colours exist in nature. The softer edges make the overall piece much more delicate, which I enjoy. The harsher lines between the colours give a stark juxtaposition that I think works well. This is perhaps my favourite piece of the developments I have made.

I also experimented with this technique, using images of nature that were taken by professional photographers. I thought that perhaps it was my photography skills (or the lack of them) that lead to my muted colour schemes. Although, having used this image that seems very vivid as a starting point to pick colours from, it seems that it was not to do with my photographs, and that the colours just react differently in different orders, on different backgrounds. This is an interesting concept.

I thought that a professionally taken image of a peacock feather would be a brilliant idea, as surely the colours would be very vivid and beautiful naturally. The colours in my painting are not quite as bright as what our eyes makes them out to be in the photograph. Regardless, I did hav fun with this piece, and made a point to adapt Rothko's style by using curving, positive lines.

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Though I have already explored Rothko's use of colour, I decided to explore his practice by mimicking it. With real paint, with a real paintbrush, on a large scale (at least, larger than I would usually use).

Rothko's paintings are usually huge enough to take up an entire wall, but I neither have the resources or room to do this. So, I found the biggest piece of paper I could.

roughly A2 size

I chose my colour scheme - Rothko was a fan of red in his paintings,
so I chose to incorporate red with yellow in order to make a gradient of sorts that could mimic a sunset
(using the colours of nature again).

I had small tubes of paint, so squeezed them directly onto the paper in squares and lines that I could work with with a dry brush.

Then, I started smearing them all together in rough squares. The motion of the brush
was wide and repetitive, and seeing the paint all smear together was very satisfying.

The process was therapeutic, and I can see why Rothko found it soothing on a much larger scale.
It could be considered almost meditative, as you lose yourself in the motion of the paint as you work.

I didn't wash my brush at all. I started with the lightest colours first, then moved on to the dark. This meant that as I was painting the dark red, bits of yellow smeared into it from my brush. It added an extra flare and depth that I didn't expect.

I added a dark blue around the edges of the colour that I had already laid down. I intended to smear them together in a similar way to the lighter colours, merging lightly with the red and yellow whilst they were still wet to create a soft gradient, almost like that of a sunset (which is what I was going for in the first place).

Inspiration Stream: Nature - Demonstration of Colour & Pattern

Inspiration Images from Nature:

In my Statement of Intent, I spoke about just how wonderful colour is, and how special we are to have so much of it naturally occurring in this little world of ours. This blog post is a compilation of found images, and a few of my own images(which are nowhere near as impressive), to demonstrate just some of the incredible colours and patterns that are around the globe, naturally occurring in the places we would least expect them to. We should be so grateful to live in a world with such beautiful things. I know for a fact that I will probably live my entire life without seeing most of these, but at least I can appreciate them from a distance.
I don't believe in God, so I cannot and do not intend to thank anybody for these creatures/things. I think the lack of belief makes it even more amazing that they exist.

I intend to draw inspiration from these images, not only from the colour schemes, but the patterns too. I feel that there is an unlimited amount of potential, and I have barely scratched the surface of beautiful things that I could study.

Birds: (not my own images)

I think this bird is absolutely amazing! The colour
scheme and the way that the vivid green frames the purple
is amazing to me.

All I can say about this one is WOW.
It's amazing that this is completely natural, and that there is
an entire species of  this bird, every single one with this
amazing, vivid colour scheme.

My own images:

Pigeons: Trafalgar Square

Swans: Needham Lakes

Unfortunately, the difference between my photography and the photography that I have sourced, is that the foreign birds are colourful, wonderful, mystical things that seem to have been plucked straight from a fairytale, whereas the English birds seriously lack colour. Very boring, in comparison! Which is a shame, because it means that if I did want to explore these tropical birds, I would be unable to give photography from a primary source. Not even zoos (that I am aware of) have these birds, or anything similar to them.

Fungus: (the images are not my own, as unfortunately I live very far from any rainforests)

it amazes me that these colours are natural -
fittingly, it's named as an "Amethyst Deceiver"

this is genuine photography, and these mushrooms genuinely
DO glow in the dark, which I think is incredible

these mushrooms almost look like they should be underwater

this small mushroom seems to glitter - it's very small and cute,
and reminds me of crystallised sugar - it looks like it should
be on top of a cake

this fungus is my favourite of all of them - the way that the "tendrils" flow out in all directions and branch off,
they almost look like waves as they curve and fan out
I could use the pattern of this fungus in my art, and nobody would have a clue that it came from a mushroom,
as it is just that strange, almost ethereal in nature.

I had no idea that this beautiful thing existed until today, and I probably never would have - it's a shame that the beautiful
images on this thread are not better known

 (having said that, most of them are probably very poisonous and better left alone

.... which leads me onto another trail of thought, that I will address in another blog post!)

another mushroom, the same breed as the blue one 2 images ago,
but this time, the cap is not round and smooth, it is winding
and tubular much like a brain or intestine!
very strange

these mushrooms almost look like metals, or glass!
I love the metallic sheen, which we would never assume
to be naturally occurring in nature